The following is the second e-mail of this kind I received. This is obviously a scam although I didn't check anything or call them to confirm this deal. Reasons: (1) I am not a wedding photographer. (2) There should be sooo many photographers in CA to shoot a wedding.

Here is the e-mail:

I am Babs David from Belgium, i came across your profile after an effortless search for a profesional photographer.I will be coming over to Ca,USA with my wife to be,for our formal wedding ceremony.We will like you to be our photographer for the wedding,which comes up on the the 11th of Febuary 2006 at the church and the reception follows immediately at (Magic Castle Hotel, 7025 Franklin Ave. Hollywood Los Angeles, CA 90034) in California.

We will require you to arrive in our hotel on friday evening of 10th jan 2006,so we can go to the Church together on saturday, and you can be able to commence work early saturday morning.

We will be glad to know your booking rate for the day and the airfare from your State to the Hotel, so we can arrange for the payment asap.

The hotel address is: Magic Castle Hotel, 7025 Franklin Ave. Hollywood Los Angeles, CA 90034, So Our hotel room number and everything to locate us in the hotel will be given to you as soon as possible.

You can always call me at my satellite phone,0092348058006997 or you can chat with my fiancy on yahoo messenger chating, her ID is rossy_joss@yahoo.com .

I think I got the same one, but with a different date. I get several of these every month, and I'm sure any photographer with a web site gets them as well.

In short, here's how the scam works: You give them a price, as an example lets say you tell them you'll do it for $3,000. They'll agree but ask you if it would be OK if they send you a check for more, and you forward the excess to the DJ service (or some other vendor). They send you a money order or some other payment for $5,000 and you send a check for $2,000 to the other vendor. Of course, the money order was a fake, you're out $2,000, they move on to the next victim.

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really